Many building structures, such as floors, ceilings, and the like, include a concrete slab having pipes embedded therein. These units are generally formed by building a wooden form, supporting the pipes in the form, and pouring the concrete into the form. Once the concrete is set, the form is removed.
Heretofore, it has been the practice in the art to either tie the pipes directly to a form board or nail small pieces of wood to the form board to support the pipes on that form board. This pipe supporting process creates at least one problem in that an element is generally interposed between some portion of the pipe and the concrete. Thus, after the concrete has set, there may be portions of the pipe which remain exposed.
While the art does include devices which support a pipe coupling perpendicular to a planar surface of a form board, the inventor is not aware of any pipe supporting element which can support a pipe parallel to that from board planar surface in a manner which permits the pipe to be totally embedded in the concrete supported by that form board planar surface.
Since building costs can be appreciable, it is also important that overall costs be kept as low as possible. One way to achieve this goal is to re-use various parts and elements as many times as possible. This goal applies to the elements use in setting concrete as well as to other parts of the building. However, the inventor is not aware of any pipe support elements that are easily used, and are amenable to easy and efficient reuse as well. Some such elements may be so difficult to re-use, that it is actually cheaper to simply discard the element after a single use, and use new elements each time. Not only is this wasteful of time and materials, it creates trash disposal problems as well.
Accordingly, there is a need for a support element which can support a pipe away from a surface of a form board in a manner such that concrete poured and supported by that form board will totally surround the pipe, yet will be economical to use and be re-use.